✦—✦—✦•
April 19th, Hanover Gardens, London
Sunday was a special day, a holy day, and that I could, for once, agree with my grandfather. Clive Price was a wholly holy man, or supposing that denomination only referred to clergy of some kind, then it would be right to call him a devout man. He was raised in the Baptist Union of Wales Church. The only reason that he could deal with moving to London was that he had already moved churches once to Manchester and clearly did not like his current place of worship.
Now, if you interrogated me, I'd say Clive was not a very pious man, for it was he who cursed at drivers on the road, said unkind things about certain groups of people (mainly the English), and overall did not display the behaviour expected of the most devout. One thing he still insisted on was that Sunday was his church day, and nothing would bar his day of worship. Thus, he had gone off to Stockwell Baptist Church, and starting this week, he would browse every Baptist church within driving distance to decide on his semi-permanent church in London. I'd been in church quite frequently in my life so far on account of my parents. Because of my revelations, I was a true believer in God. Nowadays, I was not so sure. My revelations were incredibly spotty on the detail about my relationship with god. Making me believe that I was both an atheist and a Christian. So, did I lose faith or become born again? Am I born again AND born again? That was a lame joke, but I still chuckled.
"What you snickering about?" Nain said with a smile.
"Just thinking about Taid's words," I put on my rough voice. "Lord willing, I won't see more of those wankers."
I got hit on me bum decidedly harder than the last time.
"No cursing. Ever!" Nain intoned.
"Sorry," I said.
"If you're done being silly, we should get going now. Better get early when you can, that's the secret to being punctual," Nain doled out her brand of wisdom.
"Yep," I agreed.
We were renting this house for the express purpose of me never being late to rehearsal ever. I could walk three minutes and be in the studio. Still, she was right — showing up earlier would be better. Nain suggested I take tea in a flask; I accepted because it wasn't a choice at all. We skipped out of the house to find the cul-de-sac-style street. Only, there was a grass patch in the middle and sweet cherry trees around. Japan was known for its sakura trees; why was London not known for its cherry trees? With April underway, spring was in full force, cherry trees had blossomed pure white flowers that smelled like vanilla and almond. I had a smile plastered onto my face. I was living in London, performing on the West End — Hammersmith. I caught my slipping tongue and grinned some more.
—✦—
Oval House Theatre looked resplendent. The building curved in the way the road did, giving the same feeling as the cul-de-sac of my new home. The half-moon building had many functions. The main entrance was at the near end from the road; the wide street merging onto the side of the building. Chairs and market umbrellas were set up in the way of outdoor restaurants. Then I noticed the sign nearby that said [Oval House Theatre and Bar]. Of course, it couldn't be England without a pub at the nearest corner. We went past the bar doors and instead went through the main entrance; an art gallery greeted us. Strewn around the place were paintings marked with their prices, with a line of dust covering their frames. Nain led me through to the next area, where we found the ticket office/reception.
"Up the stairs and just keep going straight," the older lady directed us.
By the time we were going up the stairs, there were many people around already. Almost too soon, I saw the familiar face of John Rawnsley — only this time, he had grown a bigger moustache to suit the role even better.
"Hello!" I almost screamed and ran towards him. To his credit, he didn't seem alarmed.
"Haha!" John chuckled. "Wow, you've grown so much! Almost as tall as me!" John laughed.
"Liar." I mock-stomped his feet. I had marks on my wall at home to track my height. So far, I hadn't grown in the last few months. "You've grown fatter, though."
"Ah, now you are just being mean. I meant that you feel taller. People can grow in more ways than one." John smiled kindly, as he did.
"Hmph." He was right in more ways than he could imagine.
"Ahem." A cough escaped at my back.
"Oh, who is this?" John asked, searching my Nain's face.
I cleared my throat pompously, "John Rawnsley, meet Gladys Price, my Nain — that's to say, my grandmother. Married, of course, so do respect her as is her due." I spoke with a posh accent.
Nain had her hands around my shoulders, much too close to my neck — a warning.
"Ah, great to meet you. You must've been a talented actress, because Will here is much too natural." John laughed again.
Their conversation from there got much too annoying to listen to. I didn't think John was the type to flirt with someone's grandmother, but he seemed to smirk at me each time he said something gross to my ears. The long hall snaked by the auditorium and finally had us in a rehearsal area. We were at the other end of the building because I saw the street through the fire exit doors at the end. The walls and ceiling were fully white, and a rectangular skylight topped the area like a pyramid. High ceilings and timber flooring — it was less weathered and more professional than the space at Croydon Church.
However, instead of the floor being left open for dancing, it was instead set up like the church once again — dozens of chairs facing each other in a rectangle, and in the middle stood Steven Pimlott and Leslie Bricusse. There were a few chairs occupied by other cast members already. John seemed to know what was happening and led us over to the director.
"John, good to see you. Why don't you take a seat there," Steven gestured, and John left to his seat.
"Ah, Tommy Number One. Over there, please. Grandma can take the seat behind." Steven pointed to the seat closest to the directors.
I mean, I was Tommy Number One, but it hurt to be called by my character name — too unimportant to even be remembered by my own name.
While my excitement had cooled, my Nain seemed even more giddy as she grasped me from behind and made excited little noises. She asked me questions of who was who as people were pouring in and in. There were two dozen people seated already and a dozen more who stood at the periphery — crew, by my reckoning. Once it seemed everyone had come in, Steven clapped his hands once to silence the loud, buzzing conversations.
"Thank you, everyone. I know you are all eager to start rehearsing so you can start getting paid." Steven joked. Everyone around me laughed.
My face grew stony, blood draining from it. It all made sense now. Of course it did — why would the producer start paying me before I'd done any work? How much money had my parents been spending to get me attending the private classes? I sat as still as a statue, running the numbers in my head. Maths was still my strong suit, even if I was only at the level of a sixteen-year-old.
"Theatre's always been like that — find a job, look for the next, and block out a timeline while you audition for another job. Well, today we will start off what may be the next permanently-running show on OR off the West End." Steven then pointed somewhere off to where the crew was in. "Paul Gregg, Chairman of the Apollo Theatre Group."
Not many of the cast clapped, but the crew was loud enough for all of us.
"He's the one who got the bright idea of casting Phillip Schofield, a TV host, as our lead actor!" Steven said with wide eyes and unbelieving expression. People laughed. "Turns out he is indeed very good. Those who've seen Joseph and the Amazing Technicolor Dreamcoat can attest to that. But it was Paul Gregg who also got us a booking at Labatt's Hammersmith Apollo."
People cheered — after all, there were not many times you could say you played the theatre with the most capacity, if we ignore the Royal Albert Hall. I spied with my little eye that Leslie Bricusse looked quite pissed off about that. Why? Maybe because Hammersmith was more of a music concert hall, or maybe Leslie wasn't being paid enough. My guess was as good as dirt.
"So, to start us off on this amazing adventure, we must get everyone in the same lane. We must travel the same wavelengths to make Leslie's vision come alive. We are competing with the likes of Rex Harrison, Anthony Newley, and Richard Fleischer. Good thing is that we have Leslie, who can help us in showing up those old geezers," Steven said as he puffed up.
All the cast and crew laughed again.
"We'll start with the table read. All the music is from the 1967 Fleischer film. Do note, though, that we'll be making some changes—so don't go off practising those just yet. Mike Dixon will be directing the music until we finish the cast recording, so hold off on specific song rehearsals until he's had time with all of you."
Steven's tone shifted to something more serious.
"We start in Puddleby-On-The-Marsh. It's 1837, a bright day in this fishing and trading town. A boy is sitting on the docks watching the fishers leave emptyhanded and come bursting with baskets of fish. Matthew Muggs, an Irishman and fisherman in equal measure, walks by the boy. Bryan, please take it away." Steven pointed over at a plain looking man.
"Will you stop your dreaming, Tommy," Bryan said in a thick Irish accent.
"Okay, here's your turn, boys. We'll take turns reading Tommy's lines so I know you're paying attention. You are number one," Steven pointed to me, "You are number two," he pointed at James, "And you are number three," the final boy, if I remember right, was called Damien or Darien — that sounded right.
Steven then pointed at me like a conductor.
"Hello, Matt," I let out, a bit awkwardly.
"Come and help me bring fish to my clients," Bryan continued on, sing-song voice.
"Can I push the barrel?" James read.
"Well, it won't push itself, will it?" Bryan said with a grin.
"You know it's against me religion to do anything violent at the end of the day. God bless all Irishmen." Bryan mimed drinking something.
"I was thinking if you sold your fish barrow and I sold my grandfather's watch, we could buy a boat and go to China," Darien read with a little more excitement than James had shown.
"Oh, you're the middle of two ends of a fine fella, Tom, and it's a beautiful proposition. But don't you see the problem?"
"What's that?" I read, annoyed with how short my lines were.
"Well, do you speak Chinese?" Bryan asked.
"No," James replied. Maybe my lines weren't that short.
"Then if you sell your grandfather's watch and we go to China, how are you going to tell the time?" Bryan asked mischievously.
"I never thought of that," Darien finished. He was definitely lucking into the longer lines.
"Aw, well now, you see, you have to plan ahead! It's very important. I mean, the whole secret of my success with the fish barrow was years of planning ahead."
Lines kept going on and on, painting the picture of Matthew and Tommy going through the docks collecting fish and then finding an injured duck. Matthew took the duck so that it could be healed by an animal doctor.
"Who is John Dolittle?" I asked.
"John Dolittle is the greatest animal doctor in the world today and a close personal friend of Matthew Mugg. Lives right here in Puddleby, he does, out in the Ox and Hog Road," Bryan said with a little bit too much Irish accent.
"Bryan, dial it down a bit. It's just a table read. Don't want any of you to start practising your scenes and later on me trying to fix all the bad habits. Just read it, use the emotions on script but nothing else, nothing too much either," Steven said coolly.
Bryan muttered an apology.
"What does he do?" James picked up.
"He's a genius, that's what he does. He can talk to animals," Bryan simply read it this time.
"Talk to them?" Darien said.
"Speaks their language, he does. Just like you and me's chattin' now. He'll have a word with that little fellow in wild duck talk and put him straight in no time. Oh, the darling man!" Bryan spoke dreamily.
"He'd think nothing of travelling round the world to cure a sick sparrow. Only last week he went all the way to Africa," he continued. "Ask me why?"
"Why?" Oh, the short lines were just for me.
"Why? I'll tell you. He's an altogether marvellous man. And he understands the Irish."
Suddenly, music played from the cassette player.
"That's the overture — get used to hearing it," Steven chuckled and pointed once it was Bryan's turn.
He continued where he left off.
"And any man who understands the Irish can't be reckoned altogether too bad." Bryan read, but at the same time, Anthony Newley started to sing the song.
Steven's hand raised up and lowered as if to conduct Bryan to lower his volume to zero. Then it was the music that picked up in full volume, and we sat there listening to the musical number. Steven would inform us each time the music or the story had been changed from the 1967 film version. In between songs, we went back to the line read. Phillip, as the lead, said the most lines, and Matthew and Emma were close behind him, while I trailed far behind. There were many changes to the lyrics and structure of the songs to fit the current times and the theatre medium better.
By the time we finished, I understood the story better than when I had read the script by myself. The reason was Steven and Leslie, who were there to really paint the picture. Each time a scene changed, Steven would describe the surroundings and paint a picture so vivid in your mind that you couldn't help but start dreaming up the scenes. The table read finished with a triumphant return of the Doctor. Back to England and his new lady love, Emma, and the animals of England who protested Dolittle leaving the island.
Steven also explained dropping some songs so that the final musical would be a more coherent piece. Interestingly, the new musical had thrown away the plotline where Matthew also fell in love with Emma — friendship being at odds for a love triangle seemed too tired a trope for Steven and Leslie to use at this time. The final few songs were reprises that would be performed by the entire cast to finish off the play with a bang. We discussed the play at length while Leslie and Steven answered questions from the cast. After three hours of table read and listening to music, Steve stood up again to do his signature clap.
"Good job, everyone. I hope you're all now on the same page about the production. That was the plot in its entirety. So, now is the time for technical details," Steven said, reading off a sheet.
My brain was fried during what happened afterwards. We had around fifty-seven actors in the cast. Despite there being only a dozen named characters, there was the logical need for replacements that had the cast balloon up in number. I was, of course, one of three different boys playing Tommy Stubbins; as the only child role in the show, it had a rotation of kids that two would play while a third remained on standby in case someone got sick. Phillip, as the titular character, had what was called an understudy — two of them, in fact. Understudies would rehearse together until they perfected their parts and be on standby to go on in place of Phillip when he couldn't make it. No director really wanted that to happen because Phillip would be the one drawing in the crowd, and having someone else play Dolittle would eat into profits as interest died down.
The same applied to every single role except the ensemble, each role had two replacements. And all their names were read off by Steven. Directors weren't helpless though. As they had a super substitute in the swing roles. We were introduced to four swing actors who could play literally any role in the production. Maybe not right now, but they would learn basically all roles between themselves. They were the flexible clay that could mould into whatever we were missing.
I was handed a sheet by a stagehand with my very own schedule of rehearsals. My name was printed in bold at the very top: Tommy Stubbins — WILFRED PRICE. I ignored the part where the other two kids' names were there too. At least mine was at the top. The document outlined who would rehearse each day and what time they were to be called in. The stagehand who handed me the sheet had done me a favour and highlighted each and every instance of my name. I'd have to copy it into my own schedule and paste it on my wall. Everything got so real, so suddenly. Before this, it was just a contract; now I saw a hundred people jammed inside a room, all working to put on a show full of grandeur and wonder.